Hey Customer and future Customers!
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic we've stopped our partnership with EMS until the world returns to normal, as EMS deliveries are becoming very unreliable outside of the EU. This will limit our shipping options to some countries or regions. Please accept our sincere apologies if you can't find a feasible shipping option during your checkout.
Please note that the shipping options that are available can take longer to deliver than initially indicated.
We'll return to the normal state of operations as soon as possible. Other than that our business is operating as usual and we're actually thinking of hiring.
Be reasonable, stay safe, stay indoors and take your gaming to the next level,
Team Azeron
We have finally found the time to round up some of our demo units, used and returned keypads. We've spruced them up and prepared them for sale. They should show up as refurbished keypads in the store by the end of the week (we're aiming for April 2). Expect about 25 keypads, at varying price points, from 80 to 130 euros (that's about 89 to 143 USDs).
Around the same time palmrests and other spare parts should gradually appear in the store as well. We hope this will make things simpler for the few people who want to buy spares.
With the fun stuff out of the way, we'd like to mention that our business remains largely unaffected by the coronavirus pandemic. Our employees are healthy and we are following all the necessary guidelines to keep it that way. Please do the same. Stay healthy and follow whatever recommendations are in place where you live.
Stay home, play a game or two :)
Team Azeron
We've come with some good news today! We've finally reached a stage in our growth where we can keep a stock of the most popular combinations of the keypad. Some colors and combinations will still be made to order (up to 15 days, but usually faster). For example, there will be no stock of lefties versions, since only a few of them are ordered every month, and we can't predict which of the 64 combinations will be ordered.
We'll keep an eye on how the popularity changes, and update our stock accordingly. For example, Galaxy Purple is a lot more popular than we expected!
To account for these changes, we've changed the wording in our store. We've replaced "Pre-order" with "Made to order" to make it clearer that the wait time is short in comparison how it was before. We'll strive for no longer than 15 days for made-to-order combinations, and up to 3 work days for in-stock keypads.
As for other news, we've released another stability update for the software and firmware. You can find it in our downloads page.
Regarding what is going on in the world right now - FedEx has notified us that due to flight restrictions, International Priority shipments might arrive a day later.
EMS international shipments are affected as well. Shipments to New Zealand will be delivered only when restrictions of inbound flights to New Zealand are cancelled. If you plan to order from there, contact us first. We can check if FedEx/TNT can help.
EMS has some limitations to deliveries to Italy as well. They do deliver there, but will leave the box at a post office and avoid human contact until restrictions are lifted.
Stay safe,
Team Azeron
UPDATE 2: FedEx & TNT International Priority options are back, but will take a day longer than usual.
UPDATE: FedEx & TNT has let us know that due to flight restrictions, International Priority shipments might experience delays. Thus we have disabled the option in our store, to prevent users for overpaying. We suggest using International Economy instead.
Original post:
During this alarming period Team Azeron continues its operations as usual. All our employees are healthy and there are no confirmed COVID-19 cases in our city of operations, nor nearby.
Kind regards,
Team Azeron
It's been a month since our last blog post (blogs are still a thing, right?). A lot has happened in that time and we are excited to tell you all about it! So let's dig in...
First off, we are having a booth at HyperTown (how can you not like something with a .pro domain)! HyperTown town is a PAX-ish Urban & e-sports festival in Latvia. It's about the games industry, e-sports, entertainment, streams, influencers, social media and the likes. There's even some cosplay! We'll be there on 15th and 16th February. If you are attending, please come by and say hi! You'll also get the opportunity to try out the keypad in different sizes with different palmrests.
It will be a great opportunity for us to practice for when we decide to set up at a bigger, international expos.
Speaking of bigger things, we finally implemented one of the most requested features in the keypad software./firmware - native analog support. Technically it's called XInput support, but simply put, the keypad now pretends to be an Xbox 360 controller as well. Which means you can set up the analog stick in Xbox 360 mode and the stick will allow full analog movement in games that support it (including Fortnite). You can uninstall those emulators now.
You can get the latest update from our downloads page. If you are having trouble updating, please follow our mod @Cardiacs full reset guide. Most that face problems reported that it helped.
There's a new, but very niche, feature in the update as well - Analog + Keyboard mode. What it does - it makes the analog stick work both as an analog stick and a keyboard, basically, sending keyboard signals as well as analog stick signal, when you move it. Who would need such a weird feature, and why, you ask. It's Beaks. If set up properly, it helps with strafing in Fortnite, and maybe other games. You can get some more details in the video where Beaks uses foot pedals for the same effect. For most of you, the Xbox 360 Analog Stick setting will do just fine.
The update fixes the waking from sleep crash as well. If you find some bugs or issues with the new software or firmware, come tell us on Discord.
With this important update out of the way, we'll focus on a new version of the software with a lot more features and customization options.
Oh, and speaking of customization options, we have new colors for keypads - available now! You can see some beauty shots of them below.
Keep in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Discord and Reddit.
Best of wishes,
Team Azeron
P.S.
We played around with the white color as well, with some amazing results. You can see them in our gallery. We haven't put them up for sale, but if you are interested, you can contact us.
;And here we have prepared one cool infographic about how 2019 was for Azeron in numbers!
We understand that opening our shop and taking more orders in, while the previous orders haven't been fully produced yet, may cause some confusion, so here are some facts that we all need to remember:
Thank you all for the great support!
LatvianCAT & Team Azeron
Hi Community!
Another week has passed quite quickly and we are back with the latest report and some news, so let’s get to it!
During the last week, we have sent out 85(!!!) Azeron Keypads to you, guys, which means that all priority queue orders (except for 1 keypad for lefties, which will be sent out this week) from last wave have been sent out! If you haven’t received your tracking number do not hesitate to contact me directly (your Community Manager LatvianCat on discord) or on any of our social media;
Some of you have already seen this, but Azeron has been nominated as one of the Rising Export Stars. Let's give these news a little round of applause and thanks to the The Red Jackets for making this happen!;
gadgettry.today posted an article about our keypads, you can read it here ;
As there are still a lot of problems with many banks not letting payments through (until asked by you), because we are in Eastern Europe, we are already testing Stripe as a second payment method for customers in the countries we have most problems receiving payments from. Those of you that had unsuccessful payments with Paysera, will have an opportunity to finish your orders through Stripe. This should solve many headaches to both you and us. Stay tuned for that, because this is one of the main reasons of our shop still being closed since last order wave.
A few of the most asked questions still are: Is there a waiting list? How can I pre-order? When will you add stock? First of all - Huge thank you for your patience. As you can see by our reports, we’re working with a speed of light and adding something little every day to do it even better and faster. Second - Very, very soon we will open shop again and add some stock available for you to purchase. Stay tuned, follow our channels and you won’t miss the news you’re waiting for!
Thank you all for the great support! LatvianCAT & Team Azeron
Hi Community! Everything is happening so fast!
If you are still wondering - Wave 2 is officially done! 78 Keypads have been sent out since the last blog post, priority queue orders from
last wave are on their finish line and we’re coming close to start production on standard queue orders! Now we have even more work ahead and a lot
of keypads to make from the last pre-order wave, but to assure you of the progress,
here are some interesting improvements we’ve implemented by now:
And more to come! As there are still a lot of problems with many banks not letting payments through (until asked by you), because we are in Eastern Europe, we are still working to add Stripe as a second payment method for customers in the countries we have most problems receiving payments from. This should solve many headaches to both you and us. Stay tuned for that!
Many of you are asking every day on every social media channel we have - Is there a waiting list? How can I pre-order? When will you add stock? First of all - Huge thank you for your patience. As you can see by our reports, we’re working with a speed of light and adding something little every day to do it even better and faster. Second - We don’t want to promise any dates/times or amounts right now, because we still need process last pre-order wave. Stay tuned, follow our channels and you won’t miss the news you’re waiting for!
I, Katya (@LatvianCat on Discord), your community manager, am here - I’m still feeling my way around and getting familiar with everything, but soon I’ll take over most of the communication. ( With some of you I have already talked, hi! ) Our social media accounts should become more active as well, so please follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Twitter and YouTube, and join our Discord server.
Thank you all for the great support!A few days ago we started taking pre-orders in the more classical sense of the word. It went well! But more on that later.
Some of you are still wondering about Wave 2. We're more than halfway done - we've shipped ~55 keypads, and the rest are being produced right now. We had a small dip in production due to circumstances that, for a small company like us, are hard to plan around (sick leave). But that will not affect our original Wave 2 promises. If all goes according to plan (fingers crossed), the last of Wave 2 should be shipped by 8 November at the latest.
Now back to the pre-orders - as you probably remember, we took two types of them: standard and priority. Priority will be produced first, and are guaranteed to be produced within 30 days, while the rest will be produced after, but no later than 180 days after the order was placed.
We planned to take a total 1200 orders (1000 standard, 200 priority). The priority orders went quickly! Thank you everyone for showing that you like our product so much, that you are willing to pay extra, just to get it sooner! That means a lot to us.
We've sold out once again. But some orders were canceled and some were duplicates made by people too eagerly trying to complete a failed payment. We plan to go through all the orders, and restock both types of pre-orders appropriately. Stay tuned for that!
Thus, the priority production and standard stock should become available again. We plan to to keep at least some pre-orders always available. This should ensure that most of you can get on the queue without staying up late, or rushing to make the order.
If you are one of the customers who placed too many orders, and want the duplicates to be canceled, please email us. Or, if your payment didn't go through, please contact your bank and have them white-list Paysera bank (Lithuania) and Azeron LTD (Latvia). Then try the payment again via the link sent to you by Paysera, or contact us via email, if you no longer have a link to pay through. Please note that we are receiving tons of emails right now and it will take more than a few days to get back to you.
Which leads us to some news! Since there are still a lot of problems with many banks not letting payments through (until asked by you), because we are in Eastern Europe, we plan to add Stripe as a second payment method for customers in the countries we have most problems receiving payments from. This should solve many headaches to both you and us.
As for some fun stuff, here are some interesting stats from the pre-order wave:
We're also expanding our team even more - new production people and a programmer are joining at the end of next week. In addition to that, we now have a community manager - Katya (@LatvianCat on Discord). She's still feeling her way around and getting familiar with everything, but she'll soon take over most of the communication. Our social media accounts should become more active as well, so please follow us on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and join our Discord server.
Thank you all for the great support!
Team Azeron
PS: A treat for all of us who like charts:
We've finished all of Wave 1 orders! Apart from a single leftie model, all of the orders were shipped today (the leftie will be shipped on friday). You should start receiving your tracking numbers soon. Don't worry if you don't receive them immediately. We currently send them out by hand, so it might take some time, as we do it between answering your emails.
That means we are starting production on Wave 2 orders this week. The first four were shipped together with the final orders of Wave 1. We were cautious about over-promising, but our assembly employees are getting more efficient and have exceeded our expectations. In addition to that, new employees start training on Monday, thus we should be able to fulfill all of the Wave 2 orders sooner than initially planned. We'll ship them out at least every other day, so you just have to wait for a tracking number.
Does that mean we will take new orders soon? Why yes, it does! But before we talk about that, let's talk about what we have achieved in the two months so far.
In the beginning of August we moved from producing the keypads in Imants living room, into our current space, soon after we hired two more employees to help with assembly, and now we are a team of 10 (including the 4 founding members). As mentioned above, more employees start training on Monday, and we plan to hire more in the coming weeks. We have recently doubled the amount of 3D printers we have. And that is not the end of our growth.
Which brings us back to the next Wave. We've been talking about this internally for a while now, and the response from Wave 2 helped solidify our plans. A lot of you have suggested either larger waves, or taking pre-orders in the classical sense, since many of you can't get one, either due to time constrains, time zone differences and the huge demand.
So we have decided to open up a lot of pre-order spots. Not entirely unlimited, but most of you
should be able reserve a spot. A lot of people contact us about wanting to order
a keypad between waves, and are willing to pay extra for a faster service. These
aren't just a few people. It's a whole customer group. Thus, we will open two
pre-order queues:
The priority queue will be produced first, ahead of the standard queue. But if you got in to any queue at all, you are guaranteed to receive the keypad. No more waiting for a monthly-ish wave to have a chance at getting one.
Getting into the priority queue, to have your keypad be produced and shipped first, will cost 135 EUR extra. We wouldn't offer it there weren't so many people requesting it. The price is just for the priority production, to get the keypad sooner. Unlike Wave 1, there are no other benefits included.
As for the standard queue - we have decided to increase the price as well. We are continuously making small improvements to the keypad. As a recent example, we added metal threads, to users from over-tightening the screws, when adjusting the tower position. We're also buying higher quality filament and 3D printers, as that allows us to print faster, and the parts come out better looking. All of these small things don't make much of a business difference on their own, but they add up together. We also plan to hire more people that are not directly related to production. Like customer support, so you all would get better support than you are getting now (it would also save time for the rest of us), and at least another programmer, as the Azeron software has been left by the wayside and leaves a lot to be desired.
To sum up, the pricing will be as follows:
We plan to remain at such pricing for the foreseeable future. If these queues get full, we'll open them back up once production is up and we can fulfill the 30/180 day promises.
The pre-orders open:
The time of day remains the same as the previous days. But instead of a Sunday, it's going to be on a Wednesday.
Best regards
Team Azeron
PS: Since the store now supports signups, you can register and save addresses to speed up the checkout process.
Yesterday was an exciting day! We took in another 100 orders. Congrats to anyone who was fast/lucky enough to get an order in, as we sold out in 80 seconds. If we apply some math magic to it, it's pretty much twice as fast as last time! At the highest peek, there were more than 1100 users online in our store at the same time.
We're finishing last of Wave 1 orders during this week, so lets get to what at least a hundred of you want to know first - order numbers. As before, we will produce the keypads in the order you placed your orders in. We'll start production next week, and we'll ship them out at least weekly. The orders start at #10004 and end at #10116 (with some numbers missing in-between).
As before, please don't email us regarding your order unless you are sure something is wrong with it or need changes. We get a ton of emails, and it slows us down. If you got an order number and have paid - you will get your keypad.
If everything goes according to plan, we'll produce more than 35 keypads per week, and all of Wave 2 keypads will have shipped out by the second half of November.
We had reports from some US customers that their banks blocked their payments. If this happened to you too - contact your bank, and ask them to white-list Azeron and Paysera bank. Then, use the link Paysera sent you to finish the payment. If that fails, send us an email, and we'll help you any way we can.
Since we changed to a new store, things were more stable in general, while there still were some problems. There was a load balancer misconfiguration, that made a minority of users unable to connect temporarily. But we resolved it a few minutes before starting the wave.
Since the new store went live 10 minutes before 16:00 UTC, and we hadn't added the stock yet, many people were confused, that they keypads were already sold out. But in reality, the Wave 2 stock hadn't been set yet. We set it at exactly 16:00 UTC. We understand that it was a confusing user experience. The store is not yet at the quality we want it to be. We are working to improve it, and we're getting more manpower to do it.
Some stats from this wave:
As for the next wave - we haven't decided yet. Look out for announcements. We are considering changes to the process, but don't have anything to announce right now. Please be understanding and don't send emails asking when will the next wave be. We are a small company, and it takes a lot of time to process the emails we are receiving already, and we want to reply everyone. We'll announce the next wave when we are ready.
To keep up with the news, check back here, join our discord server, follow us on Facebook and twitter, and subscribe to our mailing list.
Thank you all for your passion and support, it is very energizing.
All the best
Team Azeron
PS: Some pie graphs:
Another week has quickly gone by. It has been a productive one! We sent out 55 keypads, and 15 more are waiting to be shipped early next week. We plan to finish the remaining 35 of this first wave by the end of next week.
I'd also like to remind you, that we'll take about 100 orders in Wave 2. More details in the announcement.
As for payments tomorrow: we'll only accept Visa and MasterCard. No PayPal this time (they are not seller friendly, we don't want to risk working with them, as it can be damaging).
Good look to everyone on Sunday!
Team Azeron
PS: Make sure you have you ZIP code ready for tomorrow. It will speed things up.
A little update about Week 5. Over the course of the week we shipped about 36 orders (shipped both on Tuesday and Friday).
Since the ones on Tuesday were for EU customers (due to VAT status changes), we can't tell the order number we are up to, as it wouldn't tell much anymore.
But we plan to send out last of the Wave 1 orders on the week after 13th October. We're taking new orders before the last ones of Wave 1 are sent out to plan for production of Wave 2 and to start producing new keypads them as soon as Wave 1 is done.
We're also deep into preparations for to take the orders. Hopefully we will avoid some of the technical glitches we had last wave.
Regards
Team Azeron
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